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About two months ago we did a crazy thing. We drove five and a half hours from western Massachusetts to Philadelphia and spent just 24 hours in the City of Brotherly Love before turning around and returning home.

So how did this crazy thing happen? I had received an email from my third cousin Jan Sluizer. Her great-grandmother Elizabeth Cohen was the sister of my great-grandfather Emanuel Cohen. We are both the great-great-granddaughters of Jacob Cohen and the three-time great-granddaughters of Hart Levy Cohen. Jan lives now in California, but she grew up in Philadelphia and was coming east for a high school reunion. She wanted to know if we could get together.

For several years I have wanted to visit Philadelphia—the place where my earliest American ancestors came in the 1840s, the place where my father was born and raised. Of course, I’d been to Philadelphia many times growing up to visit my grandmother and my aunt. But I’d never seen where my ancestors lived or were buried. I’d never even seen the places where my father had lived. In fact, I’d never seen Independence Hall or the other historic sights in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia, City Hall

I knew that to do everything I wanted to do, I’d need more than 24 hours. But it has been a hectic fall with far too many weekends away from home. The most we could do was get there on Saturday and leave on Sunday. And to top it off, a major storm was predicted for Sunday, meaning we’d have to hit the road even earlier than we had once hoped.

It was indeed crazy. But I am so glad we did it.

In the hours we had on Saturday, I managed to accomplish a few of the things I’d wanted to do. First, we took a tour of all the places where my Philadelphia ancestors had lived, starting with my great-great-grandparents Jacob Cohen and Sarah Jacobs and my three-times great-grandparents John Nusbaum and Jeanette Dreyfuss all the way to the last place my father lived in Philadelphia before moving to New York and marrying my mother in 1951. Here in the order in which my family occupied these places (though not in the order we saw them) are my photographs from that day.

Jacob Cohen lived for many years at 136 South Street. His pawnshop was nearby. And this is where he and my great-great-grandmother Sarah Jacobs raised their thirteen children, including my great-grandfather Emanuel. I do not think these are the same buildings that were there in the in the mid=19th century, but this is the street where they lived.

136 South Street, where Jacob Cohen and Sarah Jacobs raised their children

South Street, looking towards the river

For decades the Cohens lived in this neighborhood where many of the German Jewish immigrants lived.

But my other early-arriving ancestor John Nusbaum lived on the north side of Philadelphia during this same period at 433 Vine Street and 455 York Street. We drove down these streets, but again the buildings that were there in the era are long gone, and I didn’t take any photographs here. It was mostly warehouse buildings and abandoned or run-down buildings.

Since my Nusbaum ancestor was a successful merchant, I imagine that in his time this area was quite desirable, in fact more desirable than area south of the city where the Cohens lived. Today, however, the South Street neighborhood is quite chic and inhabited by young professionals and clearly more desirable than the neighborhood where the Nusbaums lived.

Although my great-great-grandparents Bernard Seligman and Frances Nusbaum lived almost their whole married life in Santa Fe, their last years were spent in Philadelphia at 1606 Diamond Street. Bernard died in 1903, and Frances in 1905. During that same period Bernard’s daughter Eva Seligman Cohen, my great-grandmother, and my great-grandfather Emanuel Cohen were also living on Diamond Street. That neighborhood is also in North Philadelphia. Here is a Google Streetview of that street today. I don’t think these were the buildings that were there in the early 1900s, but I am not sure.

I had better luck as I moved further into the 20th century. In 1920 Emanuel Cohen and Eva Seligman Cohen, my great-grandparents, were living on Green Street close to what is now the downtown district of Philadelphia. It is a lovely tree-lined street with cafes and historic brick townhouses in what is clearly a gentrified neighborhood. I wonder what it was like when my great-grandparents and my grandfather John Cohen lived there in 1920.

We did not have time to get to the West Oak Lane neighborhood in North Philadelphia where my father lived with his parents in 1930 at 6625 North 17th Street, so that’s on my list for when we return.But here is a Google Streetview shot of that street:

6600 block of North 17th Street, Philadelphia

I did find the apartment building where my father and aunt were living with their grandmother Eva Seligman Cohen in 1939 when she died. It is in the downtown area of Philadelphia and still called the Westbury Apartments.

Westbury Apartments on 15th Street where my great-grandmother Eva Seligman Cohen lived with my father and aunt in 1939

In 1940, my father, aunt, and grandmother were living in North Philadelphia at 106 Venango Street. That building is no longer there unfortunately. It is now a commercial area with warehouses and factory-like buildings.

But In 1950 they were living on North 21st Street in this building—another lovely tree-lined street not far from the center of the city.

North 21 Street in Philadelphia where my father, aunt, and grandmother lived in 1950

136 North 21st Street, my father’s home in 1950

Touring the city this way was enlightening because it provided some insights into the patterns of gentrification and how they have changed since 1850. My ancestors for the most part started in the southern part of the city and as they moved up the economic ladder, they moved north of the city to an area that was newer, less crowded, and more “gentrified.” But today that pattern has reversed. Young professionals want to live close to downtown and have returned to the neighborhoods closest to the center of the city like Green Street and South Street. The neighborhoods around Venango Street and Diamond Street were long ago abandoned by those moving out to the suburbs in the post-World War II period and are now depressed sections of the city.

After a visit to the National Museum of American Jewish History and the Liberty Bell and a walk along Market Street, we met Jan for dinner in the area known as Rittenhouse Square, another gentrified neighborhood with lots of boutiques, bars, and restaurants. Meeting Jan was a delight. We had long ago connected by email when Jan shared all the stories about her father Mervyn Sluizer, Jr., and her grandfather Mervyn, Sr., and the rest of her family. Now we were able to meet face to face, share a meal together, and connect on a deeper level than email allows.

Independence Hall

The Liberty Bell

The following day the rain began, but I was determined to try and see where my ancestors were buried. Our first stop was Mikveh Israel synagogue, where we met Rabbi Albert Gabbai, who took us to the second oldest Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia. Mikveh Israel has been in Philadelphia since before the American Revolution and was where my earliest Cohen ancestors belonged. It was then located about a mile from 136 South Street where Jacob Cohen lived. Although the original building is long, long gone, the synagogue still is in that same neighborhood, now on North 4th Street. According to the rabbi, it now attracts empty nesters who have moved into downtown Philadelphia. Another example of urban gentrification. Jews who long ago left downtown are now returning in their later years.

Rabbi Gabbai drove us to the Federal Street cemetery, the second oldest Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia, where he patiently and generously guided us with a map to see the gravestones of Jacob and Sarah Cohen as well as the location of Hart Levy Cohen’s grave (his stone has either sunk into the ground or otherwise disappeared).

Federal Street cemetery of Congregation Mikveh Israel

Location of Hart Levy Cohen’s grave. My 3x-great-grandfather

Jacob and Sarah’s grave is marked by one of the largest monuments in the cemetery:

I also found a stone for Joseph Jacobs, my 3-times great uncle, brother of Sarah Jacobs Cohen.

Joseph Jacobs, brother of Sarah Jacobs Cohen

Unfortunately, it was pouring by this time, and I could not find any small stones to put on the gravestones to mark my visit, which left me feeling as if I’d let my ancestors down.

After leaving Rabbi Gabbai, we drove north to the two other Philadelphia cemeteries where my ancestors are buried: Mount Sinai and Adath Jeshurun. Fortunately they are located right next to each other, and I had carefully written down the location of the graves I wanted to visit at Mount Sinai from the records I found on Ancestry. (I did not have that information for Adath Jeshurun, but only a few ancestors are buried there as compared to Mount Sinai.)

Unfortunately, despite my good planning, I had no luck. There was no office and no one at the cemetery; there was no map posted of the cemetery. And there were no obvious markings in the cemetery identifying sections or plots. And it was pouring.

My ever-patient husband sat in the car and drove slowly around as I walked up and down the drives and walkways with an umbrella and in my orthopedic boot,[1] looking for Cohens, Nusbaums, Katzensteins, Schoenthals, and Seligmans. This was the only one I could find for any of my known relatives:

From there we headed home, leaving Philadelphia exactly 24 hours after we’d arrived. It was a wet and long trip home, but I still was glad we had made this whirlwind visit. I was able to meet Jan, I saw places where my ancestors lived and are buried, and we were introduced to the city where so many of my relatives have lived. It was not enough, so we will have to return. Next time we will need to spend at least 48 hours!

[1] I had broken my ankle a few weeks before the trip. It’s better now.

Right now I am pretty absorbed in following up on the Seligmann trail in Germany and the US and in preparing for my trip, both in terms of travel details and in terms of trying to find as much information as I can about the Brotmans. I’ve been spending time going back over the Brotmanville Brotmans, hoping to find some clues I missed before the DNA results corroborated the family story that Joseph and Moses Brotman were brothers.

But before too much time goes by, I want to reflect a bit on my Dreyfuss and Nusbaum ancestors. In many ways they typify the German Jewish immigrants who arrived in America in the 1840s and 1850s. They started as peddlers, they eventually became the owners of small dry goods stores in small towns, and for many of them, they remained dry goods or clothing merchants. Unlike my Cohen relatives, who were pawnbrokers for the most part, or my Seligman relatives, who started as merchants, but became active in politics and civic and military matters in Santa Fe and elsewhere, my Dreyfuss and Nusbaum ancestors began and stayed Pennsylvania merchants, even into the 20th century.

Harrisburg Market Square with Leo Nusbaum store

In addition, the Dreyfuss and Nusbaum families almost all stayed in Pennsylvania where they started. There were some who went to Peoria, though most returned to Pennsylvania, and a few who went to Baltimore, but overall the Dreyfuss and Nusbaum families started in small towns in Pennsylvania and in Harrisburg and eventually moved to Philadelphia. As far as I’ve been able to find them, many if not most of their descendants also stayed in the Philadelphia area.

In addition, this was a family that went from poverty to comfort and then suffered financially when the 1870 Depression struck, causing many of the stores to close and forcing family members into bankruptcy. Yet the family in general rebounded, started over, and once again became merchants with successful businesses in most cases.

The other pattern I’ve noticed in the Nusbaum and Dreyfuss lines is assimilation. Although there were certainly examples of intermarriage and conversion among the Cohen and certainly the New Mexican Seligman lines, that tendency to assimilate and move away from Judaism seemed even more widespread among the Dreyfuss and Nusbaum descendants. There were fewer people buried at places like Mt Sinai in Philadelphia, fewer indications of synagogue membership or other participation in the Jewish community. Perhaps those early years in the small towns where they were likely the only Jews in town took a toll on the role that Judaism would play in their lives and their identities.

Overall, these two lines were very hard to research and write about. Not because they were hard to locate, although the Fanny Wiler mystery kept me going for quite a long time. But because there was just so much unhappiness, so much suffering. When I think back to their roots, coming from two small towns in Germany, Schopfloch and Hechingen, I wonder whether those early immigrants ever questioned their decision to leave Germany. I assume they left for economic opportunities and freedom from the discrimination they faced as Jews in Germany. Presumably they believed they had found both when they arrived and as they settled into life in Pennsylvania. And in many ways they had. They were free to worship, or not worship, as they saw fit. They were able to make a living, own property, even own businesses. They survived.

But all the tragedy and loss they endured had to wear on them in many ways. Many of the family lines ended without any descendants. I have had more trouble finding current descendants than I’ve had with the other lines I’ve researched. I don’t have one relative with the name Nusbaum, aside from my father, whose middle name is Nusbaum. The family seems to have disappeared, blended into other names, other families, other traditions.

For that reason, as hard as it was, I am happy that I was able to document and tell their story: where it began in Germany, how it continued in Pennsylvania, and what happened between their arrival in the 1840s and in the century that followed.

Handmade shmura matzo used at the Passover Seder especially for the mitzvot of eating matzo and afikoman. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A year ago I was feeling disconnected from Passover until I heard my grandson tell us the story of Passover in a way that made it feel new and exciting and different all over again. This year his little brother will experience his first seder, though at only ten months, that experience will likely be short and quite unfocused. Just a lot of really noisy people sitting around a table eating food that he neither can nor would want to eat. But it’s a new reminder that every generation and every child experiences Passover as a new experience, allowing all of us who are jaded and detached to be able to relive our own early experiences with this special holiday.

Last year I entered into Passover thinking about my mother’s ancestors, the Brotmans, the Goldschlagers, and the Rosenzweigs. I focused on their exodus from the oppression and poverty and anti-Semitism of Galicia and Romania and their courage and the desire for freedom that led them to leave all they knew to cross the continent and then the ocean and come to New York City, where they again lived in poverty but with greater hopes for a life of freedom and economic opportunity. And they attained their goals if not in that first generation, certainly by the third and fourth generations.

For the last year now, I have been researching, studying and writing about my father’s paternal relatives. It has taken just about a full year to cover the Cohens, the Jacobs (with whom I actually need to do more work), the Seligmans, the Schoenfelds, the Nusbaums, and the Dreyfusses. Soon I will start my father’s maternal relatives—the Schoenthals and Katzensteins and whatever other surnames pop up along the way. Researching my father’s families has been so different from my mother’s, and I can go so much further back. I can’t get back much before 1840 with my mother’s family and have absolutely no records before 1885 or so for any of them. Although I have a number of Romanian records for my Rosenzweig and Goldschlager relatives, I have no records at all from Europe for my great-grandparents Joseph and Bessie Brotman, despite hours and hours of searching and even DNA testing.

In contrast, my father’s ancestors have provided me with a rich opportunity to learn about Jews in Amsterdam, London, and especially the towns of Gau-Algesheim, Erbes-Budesheim, Bingen, and Schopfloch, Germany. I have been able to find records all the way back to 1800 or so for almost every line. I’ve had amazing help along the way on both sides of the Atlantic, and I’ve even learned a little German to boot. My father’s families were pawnbrokers and peddlers and clothing merchants; they were pioneers and politicians and warheroes.

They came to the United States in the 1840s and 1850s, and most of them suffered terrible heartbreaks, economic struggles, and early deaths. Most of them settled in Philadelphia and other parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but there were those who went to places that I’d never think a Jewish immigrant would go: Iowa, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, California, and, of course, New Mexico. Many married outside the Jewish community and assimilated into American culture far more so than my mother’s relatives. Ultimately, the Cohens/Jacobs and Seligmans/Schoenfelds and Nusbaums/Dreyfusses were successful; they found the American dream, and they embraced it.

But there is a very sad underside to this story of American success. It’s the story of those who did not leave Europe. For the first time in my life I confronted the reality that the Holocaust did not just happen to other families, to other Jews. Not that I have not been deeply affected by the Holocaust all my life; ever since I read Anne Frank’s diary as a child, I’ve identified with and cried for all those who were murdered by the Nazis. But I never knew that I had relatives left behind in Germany who were part of that slaughter. I am still finding more, and I will write about them soon. The list of names of my cousins who died in the Holocaust grows longer and longer, and I realize more than ever how grateful I should be to Bernard Seligman, John and Jeanette (Dreyfuss) Nusbaum, and Jacob and Sarah (Jacobs) Cohen for leaving Europe and taking a chance on the new country across the ocean.

So this year for Passover I will be thinking about that first major migration of Jews from Europe to America. I will be feeling thankful for the risks my ancestors took, and I will be feeling the loss of not only all those who were killed in the Holocaust, but the loss of all the children and grandchildren who would have been born but for those deaths.

And overall I will be celebrating family, freedom, and faith—faith that the world can be a better place and that human beings can be their best selves and live good and meaningful lives. May all of you have a wonderful weekend—be it Passover or Easter or perhaps just another weekend in April for you. Celebrate all the good things in life in whatever way you can.

Two days ago, I posted what I called my final chapter of the mystery of Fanny Wiler. I had finally learned where and when and why Fanny had died after receiving her death certificate from the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh. But I ended that post with the remaining questions that still lingered. Was the child Bertha born to a Fanny Wieler and Joseph Levi in New York City the daughter of my Fanny? If so, what happened to her? Since I could not find the family on either the 1870 or the 1880 census and since the 1890 does not exist, I didn’t know whether Bertha had died, married, or moved away between 1866 and 1900, and I could not find her in 1900 or afterwards either.

But first I had to determine whether this was in fact the child of Fanny Wiler Levy. There was no point in chasing her down if she wasn’t my cousin. I’d already spent far too many hours chasing the wrong Fanny Wiler. So I ordered the birth certificate for the Bertha Levi born in New York in 1866. It arrived hours after I posted about Fanny. And I was both excited and a bit exasperated to see that Bertha was in fact the daughter of my Fanny.

Why exasperated? Because I had no idea what had happened to Bertha. I half-wanted that baby not to have been my cousin so I could finally really put closure on Fanny Wiler. I also feared that that baby had died and would thus just be one more sad story to add to the life of Fanny WIler. But there she was—definitely their child, daughter of Fanny Wieler born in Harrisburg. It had to be the same Fanny and the same Joseph, despite the misspellings and despite the birth in New York, not Philadelphia.

So back to the books I went, now even more determined to find Bertha. It took many searches and many different wildcards, databases, and spellings, and I still could not find the family on either the 1870 or 1880 census, but I did find this:

How had this not turned up before? Because Joseph Levy was indexed as “Lery.” It was only when I searched for the name as “?e?y” that I finally got a hit. At first I wasn’t certain this was the right person, given that there was no mother’s name and that it said the mother was born in Germany. But the informant was “A.J. Levy,” and Fanny and Joseph’s oldest son was Alfred J. Levy, so I felt that there was enough here to pursue this Bertha, indexed on Ancestry.com as “Bertha Gellect.”

Well, there was no Bertha Gellect, and I decided that the name Gellert was a more likely option, even though it does look more like a “c” than an “r” on the death certificate. I also knew that in 1917 Bertha Gellert was living in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. Fortunately, my hunch was right, and I soon found Bertha and Jacob Gellert on the 1900 census living in Pottsville. Jacob was a tailor, born in New York, and he and Bertha had been married for three years or in 1897. This time the birth places of Bertha’s parents were correct: mother born in Pennsylvania, father in Germany. And the final clue that I had found the correct Bertha? Their two year old daughter was named Fanny.

I laughed, smiled, even cried a bit. My poor Fanny Wiler not only had been found; she had a namesake. Her daughter Bertha had named her first born child for her mother. Bertha had only been eleven when her mother died from tuberculosis, and it must have been an awful time for a young girl, watching her mother waste away from this dreadful disease. Bertha had honored her mother by naming her own daughter Fanny.

In 1910, Jacob, Bertha and Fanny were still living in Pottsville, but Jacob was now an insurance salesman, not a tailor. Sadly, as seen above, Bertha died seven years later from diabetes. She was only 51 years old. A few months after Bertha’s death, Jacob and Fanny both applied for passports in order to take a trip to Cuba—for “pleasure and rest,” as Jacob wrote on his passport application. Attached to Fanny’s application was a letter from a doctor, attesting to the health reasons for this trip to Cuba:

By the 1920 census, however, Jacob and Fanny were back in Pottsville. Jacob was now a widower, and his daughter Fanny was living with him. Jacob had his own business selling fire insurance. The following year, Fanny married Lester Guttman Block. Lester was born in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1895, the son of German immigrants, Daniel and Bertha. (Yes, his mother’s name was the same as that of his wife’s mother.) His father was a clothing merchant. In 1920, Lester was living with his widowed mother and his sister Alice in Trenton, where he worked as a clothing salesman in a retail store.

Fanny Gellert and Lester Block had two daughters born in the 1920s. Fanny’s father Jacob died from a brain tumor on July 23, 1927; he was 55 years old. His second wife Reba H. Gellert is named on the death certificate; he had married her by 1922, as they are listed together in the Pottsville directory of that year. Max Gellert of Pottsville, Jacob’s brother, was named as the informant. Notice also that Jacob’s mother’s name is given as Fanny Cohen. Like his daughter, Jacob had married someone whose mother had the same name as his mother. Could Fanny have been named for both of her grandmothers? Probably not since Jacob’s mother Fanny was still alive long after Jacob and Bertha’s daughter Fanny was born, and ordinarily Jews do not name their children for living grandparents.

In 1930 Lester and Fanny were living with their daughters as well as Lester’s mother Bertha. One of the daughters had a name starting with B, and since Lester’s mother was still alive, I assume that the daughter was named for Bertha Levy Gellert, Fanny’s mother. Lester was in the real estate and insurance business. In 1940, the members of the household were the same, and Lester was still an insurance agent, like his father-in-law Jacob.

Lester died on December 18, 1953, and is buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Trenton. Fanny Gellert Block, the granddaughter of Fanny Wiler Levy,the great-granddaughter of Caroline Dreyfuss Wiler, and my third cousin, twice removed, died on July 9, 1977, when she was 78 years old. She is buried at Greenwood Cemetery with her husband Lester.

Trenton Evening Times, July 30, 1977, p. 31

I am currently trying to contact the descendants of Fanny and Lester. I am hoping that they also will find meaning in the lives of our mutual ancestors and cousins.

Yeah, I know. My last post said it was the FINAL chapter of the Dreyfuss family. How could this one be the first?

Way back on November 18, 2014, I wrote, “More on the Dreyfuss family in a later post.” Then I proceeded to write about the Nusbaum family and the Dreyfuss family together. Since two Dreyfuss sisters (Jeanette and Mathilde) had married two Nusbaum brothers (John and Maxwell), it just made sense to follow the stories of the three Dreyfuss sisters (Jeanette, Mathilde and Caroline) along with the stories of the Nusbaum siblings. But what I never got back to doing was what I had promised back on November 18. I never got back to the beginning of the Dreyfuss story as I moved forward from the 1840s in America through to the 20th century. So although my last post was called the “Final Chapter” of the Dreyfuss family, I need to go back and write the first chapter before I can complete the story (as far as I currently know it).

So I need to step backwards in time—both in my time and in the times of the Dreyfuss family before 1840. Back in the fall when I was researching the family of John Nusbaum, I had a wonderful resource in the family bible owned by my father. My father had photocopied several pages of handwritten entries for births, deaths, and marriages from the bible , and most of those entries related to the Nusbaum family. From studying the page for marriages, I learned that John Nusbaum, my three-times great-grandfather, had married Jeanette Dreyfus (as it was spelled there). And that was the first time I knew the birth name of my three-times great-grandmother. On the page for births, the second entry after the one for John Nusbaum was one for Jeanette Nusbaum, giving her birth date and her place of birth. It took me a while to figure out what it said because of the handwriting, but eventually I was able to decipher it and learned that Jeanette was born in “Hechingen in Wurttemberg, Prussia,” as it is inscribed in the bible.

But there was no other Dreyfus(s) on any of the pages in the bible, and I was at that point in time focused on the Nusbaum line. It wasn’t until weeks later that I realized that the bible’s death entry for Mathilde Pollock was not an entry for a sister of John Nusbaum, but an entry for a sister of Jeanette Dreyfuss (who happened to marry a brother of John Nusbaum) and that the entry for Caroline Wiler was also not a sister of John Nusbaum but another Dreyfuss sister. The big clue was finding 65 year old Mary Dreyfuss on the 1850 census living with Caroline and Moses Wiler: a head-slapping moment when it occurred to me that it was Jeanette who was keeping the family bible and that, of course, she would record her sisters as well as her husband’s siblings in the family bible.

And then in mid-November I went on JewishGen’s Family Finder page and found Ralph Baer, who was also researching the Dreyfuss family from Hechingen. I have mentioned Ralph before in the context of the Nusbaum/Dreyfuss family and his generous help with research and translation, but what I had forgotten to write about in my telling of the story of the Nusbaum/Dreyfuss family in the US was what Ralph had helped me learn about my Dreyfuss roots in Hechingen, Germany.

Hechingen, Germany (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First, a little about Hechingen. Today it is in the German state of Baden-Wurttemburg, located about 56 miles north of the Swiss border in southern Germany. It is about 40 miles from Stuttgart, the state capital. Although inhabited long before, the city was founded as the capital city of the Counts of Hohenzollern in 1255. It remained during the Middle Ages a provincial and agricultural community. During the 16th century, it became a center for art, architecture and music. Even after the Reformation, it remained a largely Catholic community. Throughout its pre-19th century history, Hechingen was subjected to many sieges and attacks by other German states as well as by Sweden.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, “There was a small Jewish settlement in Hechingen in the early 16th century, and a house was bought for use as a synagogue by the community of 10 families in 1546. In 1592 the burghers refused to conduct any commercial or financial transactions with Jews, who therefore left the town. There is no trace of Jewish settlement in the town during the next century. In 1701 Prince Frederick William I gave letters of protection lasting 10 years to six Jewish families in the neighboring villages; soon there were Jews living in the city as well. By 1737 there were 30 households, and a synagogue was built in 1761 which existed until 1870.”

The Jewish community blossomed in Hechingen in the late 18th and early 19th century through the efforts of a woman named Chaile Raphael Kaulla. Her father was a successful entrepreneur and banker, and he provided Chaile with a good education. She even learned German, not something girls were usually taught in those times. When her father died, Chaile, being much older than her oldest brother, took over her father’s business; she managed the business very successfully while also raising six children. Her husband, a Talmudic scholar, did not work. Chaile and her brother Jacob developed a very good relationship with the authorities in Hechingen and became the leaders of the Jewish community there. Here is more about Chaile from the Jewish Women’s Archive:

Chaile developed an aristocratic lifestyle, owning an elegant house and a horse-drawn carriage, but she continued to live according to Jewish law. She never forgot the mitzvot and cared for the Jewish community together with her brother, using her connections to the prince. The Kaulla family had their own private synagogue and rabbi. Both sister and brother gave generously to the Jewish as well as to the Christian poor and founded a hostel for needy and migrating Jews in Hechingen. In 1803, they donated a Bet Midrash, a Talmud school, with three rabbinical scholars whom they supported, together with their students and an important library.

The 19th century was a time of economic and industrial growth for the town of Hechingen and for its Jewish residents. Wikipedia states that “By 1850, Hechingen had started to industrialize, primarily with Jewish enterprises. By 1871 the city had become one of the most important economic centres in the region, with textiles and machine shops among the major industries.” According to the Jewish Virtual Library, the Jewish community in Hechingen was “prosperous and owned most of the local industries.” The Jewish population reached 809 people in 1842, which was about a quarter of the total population of the town. This was also around the time that my three-times great-grandmother Jeanette and her sisters and mother would have left, which might seem strange, given how favorable the conditions there seemed to have been.

The Alemannia-Judaica, however, reports that there were some anti-Semitic “disturbances” in the 1840s, and the Dreyfuss sisters were not the only ones to leave. By 1880, the Jewish population had dropped to 340; by the 1930s it had dropped to only 101. Like so many other Europeans, Jews and non-Jews, the lure of opportunities elsewhere must have been irresistible. The Dreyfuss sisters were wise to leave Hechingen because it was no more immune to the destruction and genocide of the Nazis than any other place during the Holocaust. The synagogue was heavily damaged on Kristallnacht in November, 1938, and most of the Jewish men were sent to Dachau. In the aftermath, 53 Jews emigrated successfully; the remaining 32 Jewish residents of Hechingen were sent to concentration camps where all but one were murdered by the Nazis.

According to another source, “In 1991, the synagogue building was rebuilt as a cultural center, housing an exhibition on Hechingen’s Jewish history. A new Jewish community was founded in Hechingen in 2003.” More pictures can be found here.

Where did my ancestors fit into this story of Hechingen? I was very, very lucky to find Ralph Baer on the JewishGen Family Finder because Ralph had already done extensive research on all the Hechingen Dreyfuss families years before I stumbled onto the name in the old family bible. Even though he had not been able to find a connection between his Dreyfuss ancestors and mine, he had included my line in his tree when he’d done his research years ago. Thus, my first email from Ralph in response to my inquiry as to his Hechingen Dreyfuss family included the following names:

There were my 3x-great-grandparents right at line 31, and there at line 33 was Caroline (born Golde) “Weiler” and at line 34 Mathilde “Pollak.” I knew immediately that Ralph had found the three Dreyfuss sisters listed in my family bible. Not only did the names line up, but so did the birth dates. Thus, I now also knew that Jeanette, Caroline, and Mathilde were the daughters of Samuel Dreyfuss Zeller (later documents, as I found, indicated he had changed his surname to Zeller) and Miriam (Marianna) Samson Bernheim, that is, the Mary Dreyfuss I had found on the 1850 census living with her daughter Caroline in Pennsylvania. (The death date of 1841 given for Miriam Ralph and I later discovered was not correct. I have not, however, found a death record for Miriam, though with two grandchildren named Miriam, one (Miriam Nusbaum, daughter of John Nusbaum and Jeanette Dreyfuss) in 1858, and one in 1859 (Miriam Pollock, daughter of Mathilde Dreyfuss and Moses Pollock, it would appear that Miriam died before 1858.) In addition, I now had evidence of three other siblings: Moses, Samson, and Auguste.

But, of course, I wanted to see the actual records where Ralph had long ago found my relatives while researching his own. With his patient assistance, I was able to locate a number of records relating to my Dreyfuss ancestors. Fortunately, many of the Jewish vital records from the Baden-Wurttemburg region are digitized and available on line, and Ralph walked me step by step through the process of researching those archives and then helped me translate what I had found. Once again, I struggled with the German script, but with Ralph’s help, I was able to find a number of relevant records.

I am now including the links to them here with a transcription of what is on each record so that I have a record later when I once again have trouble reading the script. If you are interested in seeing the underlying documents, just click on the links. The JPG versions were too blurry to read, so I am only posting links to the PDF versions, with two exceptions that were more legible.

Ralph helped me decipher this; otherwise, it would have meant nothing to me: The name DREYFUSS is underlined with Samuel next to it. Below Samuel is written Zeller. Below that it says Eltern (parents) Samson, and below that Jeanette(Scheile). To the right is geb. (born) and below that get. (married). The birth date for Samuel is on the right 1776 25 Mai. Between that is written “63 alt geworden” (became 63 years old, his age at the time of the compilation). For marriage it says angebl. (apparently) 1805 with also something in Hebrew. Samuel’s wife is on the right: Miriam, daughter of Samson Bern…and Golde. It also mentions a sister name Sussen right below that. The birth date for Miriam is listed as 17 Merz (March) 1787. On the bottom are the children. The first one on the left is r Jeanette. In parentheses after her name is NUSSBAUM and below that 20 years old. To the left it states ca. 1817 20 Mai. Also listed are Moses, Mathilde Madel (Pollak), and Auguste (Golde) Weiler with birthdates. (This was obviously compiled after 1851 since all three sisters are married and Mathilde is already married to Moses Pollock, whom she did not marry until after Maxwell Nusbaum died in 1851.)

There are some missing records. I do not have a separate birth record for Jeanette. Nor can I find a death record for her mother, my 4x-great-grandmother Miriam Bernheim. I cannot find any records for the two youngest of the siblings, Samson and Auguste. I also do not understand why there are two children with the name Auguste. Perhaps one was a child of a family member who died? There is also a huge gap between the recorded marriage date for Samuel Dreyfuss and Miriam Bernheim of 1806 and the birth date of their oldest child, Jeanette, in 1817. Did Samuel and Miriam have other children who died, or is their marriage date incorrect? Samuel would have been 41 in 1817, Miriam would have been 30. Both Samuel and Miriam had fathers named Samson. Were both alive in 1819 when Moses was born? If not, it seems odd that their first son would not have been named Samson, unless there had been an earlier born son named Samson who had died.

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I have answers to so many more questions than I ever expected, thanks to Ralph. I know the names of my 4x-great-grandparents, Samuel Dreyfuss Zeller and Miriam Bernheim, and the names of my 5x-great-grandparents, Samson and Jeanette Dreyfuss and Samson and Golde Bernheim. I have the names of the three other siblings of my 3-x great-grandmother Jeanette: Moses, Samson, and Auguste. And I am not yet done looking for more about my Dreyfuss ancestors and now, my Bernheim ancestors as well.

Once again, I am deeply grateful to Ralph Baer. Without him, none of this would have been possible.

[1] Together Ralph and I filled in many of the blanks here, enabling both of us to have a more complete record.

My three-times great-grandmother Jeanette Dreyfuss Nusbaum and her two sisters, Mathilde Dreyfuss Nusbaum Pollock and Caroline Dreyfuss Wiler, came to America and along with their husbands they settled in Pennsylvania where their husbands started as peddlers and then became merchants. Two of the sisters married Nusbaum brothers: my three-times great grandfather John Nusbaum and his brother Maxwell Nusbaum. They all had several children. They all suffered financial hardship, untimely deaths of family members, and in some cases, terrible tragedies. Today there are no living descendants of Mathilde Dreyfuss. Jeanette Dreyfuss and John Nusbaum have a number of living descendants, myself included, of course.

As for the family of Caroline Dreyfuss and Moses Wiler, I have written about the lives of their daughter Fanny Wiler and her children and of their son Simon Wiler. Of their daughter Eliza’s five children, Flora and Nellie were the only ones still alive in 1920, and the only grandchild alive was Flora’s son Lester Strouse. In 1920, Lester was 32 and working in advertising, living at home with his mother Flora. In 1928, Lester married Mabel Schoultz; he was forty, and she was 37. Mabel was born in Pennsylvania, and her parents were born in Sweden. In 1930, she and Lester were living in the Plaza Hall apartments in Philadelphia. Lester was still in the advertising business, a field in which he remained for his career.

Lester’s mother Flora was living as a boarder in 1930 at 1712 Mt. Vernon Street in Philadelphia; she listed her marital status as widowed. In 1940 she was living as a boarder at 2008 Spring Garden Street; her son Lester and his wife Mabel were living in Cheltenham, a suburban community thirteen miles north of Philadelphia.

In August, 1941, Nellie Simon Loux, died at 66 of breast cancer, and her nephew Lester paid the bill for her funeral. A year later Flora Simon Strouse Heulings, Lester’s mother and Nellie’s sister, died in November 1942 from chronic myocarditis. She was 76 years old. Flora had been residing at the Majestic Hotel before becoming a patient at the Bella Vista Sanitarium in Springfield, Pennsylvania, where she died. Nellie and Flora were buried at Mt. Sinai cemetery with their parents and siblings.

Flora’s death certificate is yet another example of how unreliable these documents can be. It says her father’s name was Simon Weiler, when in fact her father was Leman Simon. Wiler was her mother Eliza’s maiden name. Apparently whoever filled this out conflated the two surnames. The certificate also represents that Flora was widowed, which she was when her first husband Nathan Strouse died. But the husband listed here, Albert C. Heulings, was alive and well and living in Chicago with his second wife. As the 1920 census had indicated, Flora was divorced, not a widow. Although the 1930 census said she was a widow and the 1940 listed her as single, the 1920 is likely the most accurate. It’s not surprising that someone grieving would make these mistakes.

Thus, by the end of 1942, all of the children of Eliza and Leman Simon had now passed away. Their only surviving descendant was their grandson Lester. That last descendant died on October 14, 1960, from coronary thrombosis; he was 71 years old. Lester, an advertising salesman all his career, was survived by his wife Mabel. There were no children, and thus that was the end of the family line for Eliza Wiler and Leman Simon.

That left only the children of Clara Wiler and Daniel Meyers to carry on the line of Caroline Dreyfuss and Moses Wiler. As of 1920, Daniel and Clara as well as their children Bertha, Samuel, and Harry were gone. I also discussed Leon Meyers’ death in my last post. By 1920, all the other children except for Milton, the youngest, were married and had settled on careers, and many had had children. In the rest of this post I will review how each of those children fared.

In 1920 Isadore Meyers was a clothing manufacturer, married to Elsie Goodman, with two sons, Robert and David. I had not had much luck finding Isadore in any city directories until I found a listing that included his company’s name, which was Meyers & Obermayer. I was able to find the company listed as early as 1911, selling “pantaloons.” Here is a small classified ad from 1915 that I found in which they were looking to purchase a second hand pressing machine for their trousers business.

Philadelphia Inquirer January 31, 1915 p. 11

The last listing I could find for Meyers & Obermayer in Philadelphia was in 1925. There are also listings for a clothing manufacturer called Obermyer & Myers in Norristown during the 1910s and 1920s, but I don’t know whether that is just a coincidence or the same business.

In 1930 Isadore, Elsie and their sons were living at 1228 65th Avenue, and Isadore was still a clothing manufacturer. I was unable to find any records for the family between 1930 and 1940, but the 1940 census finds Isadore, Elsie and David still living at 1228 65th Avenue. Their older son Robert must have been living elsewhere.

By 1950, Isadore’s business was known as Meyers and Sons, as listed in the 1950 Philadelphia phonebook. Isadore died on November 1, 1960, from heart disease. He was 81 years old. His wife Elsie died fourteen years later on December 23, 1974. She was 92 years old. They are buried at Mt. Sinai cemetery.

Max, the next son, was a mechanical engineer working at Newton Machine Tool Works and married to Henrietta Klopfer. They had a son Donald, born in 1918, and a daughter Dorothy born in 1923. Almost every year, Max, Henrietta, and their children took a cruise together. On December 1, 1939, just a few months after their last cruise, Max died from prostate cancer. He was only 58 years old. His widow Henrietta lived until April 1977; they are both buried at Mt. Sinai.

In 1920, Benjamin and Leona (Faulcher) Meyers were living in Collingswood, New Jersey, with Leona’s parents, and Benjamin was working as an optometrist. Benjamin and Leona had two children in the 1920s, Margaret born in 1924, and Clara, named for his mother, born in 1926. In 1930, the family was back in Philadelphia at 6418 North 16th Street, and Benjamin was now working as a manager in a cotton yarns business, presumably that of his younger brother Clarence, discussed in my last post and below. The family was still living at that address in 1940 (Margaret was now listed as Rosebud), and Benjamin’s occupation was now reported to be a superintendent in a factory, again his brother Clarence’s yarn business. He and Leona were now in their fifties and their daughters were teenagers. His 1942 World War II draft registration confirmed that Benjamin was working with his brother Clarence.

The National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; World War II draft cards (Fourth Registration) for the State of Pennsylvania; State Headquarters: Pennsylvania; Microfilm Series: M1951; Microfilm Roll: 212

Benjamin and Leona moved to Camden, New Jersey, the following year. He died on October 21, 1956, from heart disease. He was 73 years old. He and Leona were then living in Audobon, New Jersey, and his occupation was reported to be a superintendent for Clarence L. Meyers & Company. Leona died less than three years later on April 3, 1959, also of heart disease. She was 73.

Clarence, the cotton yarns manufacturer, had been in that business since 1910, originally operating as the Elm Converting Company. In 1920, he and his wife Estelle were living at 2251 North Park Avenue with their one year old daughter, Nancy. Clarence and Estelle apparently loved to travel. From as early as 1924 and all through the 1930s and 1940s, the family traveled to many places, according to the numerous ship manifests I located. His business was seemingly quite successful as at least two of his brothers, Benjamin and Milton, as well as at least one of his nephews were also at one time or another working in the business.

In 1940 Clarence, Estelle, and Nancy were living at 707 Medary Avenue, along with Estelle’s mother, a butler, and a servant. They were still living there in 1942 when Clarence registered for the draft and also in 1950, according to the 1950 Philadelphia phonebook.

Sadly, on February 5, 1951, Clarence lost his wife Estelle to cancer. She was sixty years old. Clarence continued to travel after Estelle died, including a cruise around the world in 1953 and trips to Argentina and to Italy in 1954 and 1955. Clarence died in April, 1961, in Dade County, Florida. He was 75 years old. He and Estelle are buried in Mt. Sinai cemetery, as is their daughter Nancy, who died just three years after her father Clarence.

The next brother was Franklin, an optometrist, who in 1920 was living with his wife Mae in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, where he had been since about 1914. Franklin and Mae had a daughter Carolyn born in 1922. Franklin and Mae remained in Pottstown throughout the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, and Franklin had an optometry practice there throughout all those years.

Franklin died on January 23, 1956, and I was able to find this detailed obituary published in the Pottsdown Mercury, the local newspaper, on January 24, 1956, pp. 1, 5:

Like so many of his siblings, he died from heart related issues. He was 68. Despite living in Pottstown for over 40 years, he was buried back in Philadelphia at Mt. Sinai. His widow Mae died twenty years later in Pottstown, and she also was buried at Mt. Sinai.

Miriam Meyers Strauss was married to Abram Strauss, a doctor, and living with him at 1836 North 17th Street in 1920. From a decision of the Pennsylvania Workmen’s Compensation Board in 1921, I was able to learn that Abram was a dermatologist. He and Miriam had two sons, Daniel and Richard. By 1930, they had moved to the suburb of Cheltenham, where they were also living in 1940.

After that I have no records for them until Miriam’s death on July 26, 1975. I do not have her death certificate because the death is too recent, and I cannot locate an obituary, but I know that she is buried at Mt. Sinai cemetery with her with her parents and her siblings, but not with Abram. I cannot find any record for Abram after his 1942 draft registration.

Miriam’s younger sister Charlotte was married to J. Albert Field, and in 1920, they were living at 1905 Diamond Street with her brothers Leon and Milton. In 1930, they were still living at 1905 Diamond Street, but without any other family members or boarders. Albert was still a department store manager. Charlotte and Albert took a cruise together to Bermuda in 1931. In 1940 they had moved to the Oak Lane Tower apartments. Albert was continuing to work as a department store manager.

Charlotte died on October 8, 1940, just a few months after the 1940 census. Although I have her burial records at Mt. Sinai, as with her sister Miriam, I cannot find a death certificate so I do not know her cause of death. Also like Miriam, Charlotte was buried with her parents and siblings and not her husband. However, Albert listed Charlotte’s brother Clarence as the person who would always know his address on his World War II registration in 1942. It appears that Albert did remarry sometime after Charlotte died as his marital status at the time was married, and the name of his wife on his death certificate in 1958 was Frances. Charlotte and Albert had not had any children.

Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Historic Pennsylvania Church and Town Records

Finally, we come to Milton, the baby of the family. In 1920, he was living with Charlotte, Albert, and Leon at 1905 Diamond Street, and he was working at Clarence’s yarn factory. Milton married Beatrice Kaufmann sometime between 1920 and 1923 because their son James was born in 1924. Beatrice was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of a merchant. In 1926 their second son Gordon was born. On the 1930 census, they owned a house worth $35,000 in Cheltenham/Elkins Park. Milton listed his occupation as a manufacturer of cotton yarns, still in business with his brother Clarence. They were living in the same house in 1940 (now given a value of only $20,000 after ten years of the Depression), and Milton’s occupation remained the same. Milton’s World War II draft registration is also consistent with these facts.

Throughout these years and the 1950s, Milton and Beatrice traveled frequently, taking trips to Cuba, England, and Argentina, for example. Milton died May 8, 1975. He was living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at the time and was 79 years old. He was buried in Mt. Sinai cemetery. His widow Beatrice died in 1996 at age 93. Her obituary fills in some of the details of her life:

Beatrice Kaufmann Meyers, 93, died Tuesday of cancer at her home in Jenkintown. Mrs. Meyers, who was a graduate of Beechwood Finishing School (now Beaver College), was the widow of Milton Meyers, owner of Clarence L. Meyers & Co., textile manufacturers. She was a driver for the American Women’s Volunteer Services during World War II, and was active in the Orphan’s Guardian Program, which was similar to Big Brothers/Big Sisters. She was a member of Philmont Country Club for more than 70 years, and of Rodeph Shalom Congregation.

(The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 20, 1996, p. B04) Interestingly, Beatrice was not buried at Mt. Sinai with her husband but at Shalom Memorial Park in Lower Moreland, Pennsylvania.

And that brings me to the end of the story of Caroline Dreyfuss and Moses Wiler, their children, and their grandchildren. Of course, there are other descendants, many of whom are still living. Looking back on this line of my family, I see a family that truly suffered greatly. Deaths from tuberculosis, a child killed by matches, financial crises, many adults who did not live to see their grandchildren. But I also see a resilient family. The children of Clara Wiler and Daniel Meyers in particular were able to overcome their father’s business problems and create their own businesses that were quite successful, allowing them to travel and provide homes and continuity for their children.

It’s another example of the much sought after American dream. In seventy years the family started by two people born in Germany who came to the United States in the mid-19th century with little more than their diligence and persistence had grown to include a number of successful descendants: a clothing manufacturer, a cotton yarn manufacturer, several optometrists, and a mechanical engineer. They overcame incredible tragedies and losses, but they nevertheless thrived in this country that had attracted their grandparents for just those opportunities for success. So although this particular chapter has at times been very sad and upsetting, in the end it is an uplifting chapter.

In 1910, the three sons of Fanny Wiler were still living with their father Joseph Levy and stepmother Bella Strouse Levy as well as their half-sister Miriam, who had married Arthur Hanff. Alfred, Leon, and Monroe Levy were all single and all employed in sales. Alfred was in lumber sales, and Leon and Monroe were selling clothing.

Five years later Monroe succumbed to the same awful disease that had taken the life of his cousin Leon Simon the year before: tuberculosis. Like Leon Simon, Monroe had been living at a sanitarium, the Dermady Cottages Sanitarium in Morton, Pennsylvania, ten miles outside of Philadelphia. Monroe had been there since November 24, 1913, and he died on October 28, 1916, almost three years later. Like his cousin Leon, he did not have a family member sign the death certificate as the informant; in Monroe’s case, it was the undertaker who took on that responsibility. Monroe was 42 years old. He was buried at Rodeph Shalom cemetery, another young man whose life was cut short by TB.

His two older brothers fared much better. Leon J. Levy married Minnie Howell in Philadelphia in 1910, apparently after the 1910 census had been taken. Minnie was a Pennsylvania native and was 35 when she married Leon; he was 38. On his World War I draft registration, Leon recorded his occupation as the manager of Walter D. Dalsimer, which was a dry goods and clothing merchant in Philadelphia. In 1920, he was still the manager of a clothing store, and Minnie was working as a chiropodist. Minnie’s parents were living with them at 5214 Spruce Street. There were no children.

On February 11, 1929, Leon died from complications from an intestinal obstruction that led to general peritonitis and a ruptured and gangrenous appendix. He was not yet 57 years old. His brother Alfred J. Levy was the informant on the death certificate. Leon’s wife Minnie died just three years later from coronary thrombosis and hypertension. She was also only 57 years old. They are both buried at Arlington Cemetery in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, a non-sectarian cemetery.

The oldest of Fanny Wiley and Joseph Levy’s sons, Alfred, married Josephine B. May in 1916. He owned his own business, A. J. Lumber Company, and in 1917 was living in the Majestic, a grand hotel catering to the wealthy in those days. Alfred and Josephine were still living there in 1918 as well, and on the 1920 census, they were still living there. Alfred was then 51 years old, and his wife Josephine is listed as 22. That means she was 18 when she married him, and he was 47. (This family certainly liked to marry people who were significantly older or younger than they were.) Alfred continued in the lumber business for many years. In 1930 census, he was now 62, Josephine was 33, and there were no children, so it does not appear that the couple had any children.

Ten years later, Alfred was listed a widower on the 1940 census; he was living with his sister Miriam and her family, and he was still engaged in the lumber business. Two years later, Alfred Levy died from liver cancer at 74 on November 15, 1942. Contrary to the 1940 census, the death certificate indicates that Alfred was divorced, not a widower, at the time of his death. Since I cannot find a death certificate for Josephine, I assume that the death certificate is more accurate.[1] His last residence was with his sister Miriam and her husband Arthur Hanff, the informant on his certificate.

Thus, none of Fanny Wiley and Joseph Levy’s sons had children, and there are no descendants. From the three oldest children of Caroline Dreyfuss and Moses Wiler, there would be only one great-grandchild: Lester Strouse, the son of Flora Simon. Lester was the only grandchild (of two) of Eliza Wiler and Leman Simon to survive to adulthood. Fanny Wiler had no grandchildren. Simon Wiler had no children.

Which brings me to Clara Wiler Meyers, the youngest child of Caroline Dreyfuss and Moses Wiler and the mother of thirteen children, eleven of whom survived to adulthood. As of 1910, none of those children had married, although nine of the eleven were already in their 20s and 30s. Only two of the eleven had moved out of the house. In the next ten years most of those children moved out and on with their adult lives. In addition, there were several losses.

First, Clara Wiler Meyers, the mother of all those children and widow of Daniel Meyers, died on November 7, 1918, from fatty myocarditis. She was living at 1905 Diamond Street, an address where at one time or another during the 1910s several of her children resided. Clara was 68 years old when she died. She had outlived one child, Bertha, and her husband, Daniel. She had weathered the financial and legal problems he had faced in the late 1890s. She had given birth to thirteen babies, one stillborn, and she had raised eleven of those babies to adulthood. Like so many women of her times, she did remarkable things but things that history would not have noticed.

Leon, her oldest surviving child, had moved out before 1910 and was working as optician and living at 1904 Somerset Street in 1911; the following year he was living and working on Market Street. On his World War I draft registration form in 1917, Leon’s address was now 1905 Diamond Street,[2] the address where his mother was living, and he now described his occupation as a self-employed optometrist [3]working in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, almost 50 miles from Philadelphia, where his younger brother Franklin had been an optician/optometrist since at least 1914. In the 1918 directory which covered Pottstown, Leon is listed at the same business address as his younger brother Franklin, working as the manager of the optometry practice and residing at the YMCA. The strangest thing about his draft registration is Leon’s entry for his nearest relative: Bessie H. Meyers, address unknown. Had Leon married since 1910? How could he be married to someone whose address he did not know? And doesn’t the name look more like MYERS than MEYERS?

The 1920 census may answer some of those questions. Leon is listed as divorced and living in the household of his younger sister Charlotte and her husband, J.A. Field, at 1905 Diamond Street back in Philadelphia, along with his younger brother Milton. Leon’s occupation is reported to be drug salesman. What happened to being an optometrist?

By 1923 Leon had moved to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and resumed practicing optometry, as discussed below, after his brother Samuel died. Leon is also listed in the Bethlehem directory with the same occupation in 1927. Leon Meyers died from colon cancer at age 55 on February 14, 1930. His brother Clarence was the informant on his death certificate. His marital status was single, not divorced or widowed, so it would seem Leon had never married. I still don’t know who Bessie Meyers was.

Leon’s next oldest brother Samuel followed in his steps professionally, becoming an optometrist. In 1912, Samuel was an optician in Philadelphia, living at 1906 Diamond Street, across the street from his mother and siblings Leon and Charlotte and Milton. By 1917, he had moved to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and was married to Mary Potts Hamilton, another Philadelphian. They would have both been in their thirties when they married. Samuel was an optometrist in Bethlehem, according to both the 1920 census and the 1920 Bethlehem directory. There were no children.

Samuel died May 10, 1922, from tubercular peritonitis, an infection caused by the same bacteria that causes tuberculosis but that manifests outside of the lungs (at least that’s what I think I understood from what I read online). Another family member thus succumbed to the deadly bacteria that causes TB. Samuel was 46 years old. It would seem that Leon moved to Bethlehem after Samuel died, perhaps to take over his optometry practice. Samuel’s widow Mary lived another 14 years, and Samuel and Mary Hamilton Meyers are both buried at Arlington Cemetery in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania.

Harry Meyers, the next brother, also died young. He was a tailor, and in 1912 he was living at 1906 Diamond Street, the same address as his brother Samuel that year and across the street from his mother and Leon, who were at 1905 Diamond Street. On his World War I draft registration, Harry was living at 1905 Diamond Street and said he was an unemployed tailor. He gave his mother’s name as his closest relative. Harry died a year after his mother on July 4, 1919. Like his brother Samuel and his cousins Leon Simon and Monroe Levy, he died from tuberculosis. He had been sick for over five years, according to his death certificate, having been treated since January, 1914. That would explain why he was unemployed in September, 1918, when he registered for the draft. Harry was 41 when he died. He never married; he had no descendants.

Thus, two of Clara’s three oldest children died from tuberculosis before they were fifty years old. Leon, the oldest, made it to 55. These three oldest sons did not leave behind any descendants. Fortunately, the family’s luck changed with the remaining siblings, all but two of whom lived until at least 1956. For these siblings, I will write about their lives until 1920 and then will write a separate post for the future years.

Isadore was the fourth brother, and he had been working as a traveling salesman in 1910, selling men’s clothing. In 1915 he married Elsie Goodman, also a native Philadelphian and the daughter of a salesman, Beno Goodman. Elsie and Isadore had a baby boy on May 1, 1916, who died that same day from atelectasis, a complete or partial collapse of the lungs. This is often associated with premature birth.

In 1918 when he registered for the draft, Isadore’s occupation was a manufacturer. He and Elsie were living at 812 North 15th Street, and they had a son born that year, Robert. On the 1920 census, they were living on Camac Street, and Isadore’s younger brother Milton was also living with them. They also had a servant living with them. On June 19, 1920, not long after the census was taken, Elsie and Isadore had another son, David.

The brother who followed Isadore in birth order was Maxwell or Max. In 1910 Max had been employed as a draftsman for a machine works company. In 1912 Max was, like his older brothers, living at 1905 Diamond Street with his mother, and he continued to work as a draftsman. In 1917 Max married Henrietta Klopfer, a Pennsylvania native and daughter of a millinery merchant. On his World War I draft registration, Max reported his occupation to be a mechanical engineer for Newton Machine Tool Works in Philadelphia. He and Henrietta were living at 1311 Ruscomb Street in Philadelphia. On September 17, 1918, their son Donald was born. Their second child Dorothy was born five years later on September 3, 1923. Here is a photo of one of the many machines made by Newton Machine Tool Works.

The sixth son was Benjamin Franklin Meyers. (I do love that name.) He was one of the earliest of the children to move away from home; in 1910, he was living in Trenton, New Jersey, working as a watchmaker. He remained in New Jersey during the next decade, and he married Leona Faulcher, a Richmond, Virginia, native and daughter of a machinist who had been living in Camden, New Jersey in 1900 and 1910. They were married as of September 1918 when Benjamin registered for the draft, and they were living in Collingswood, New Jersey. Benjamin was now involved with aircraft production for the Victor Talking Machine Company, the company famous for the Victrola phonographs. In September 1918, just when Benjamin was registering for the draft, the company converted to the production of aircraft parts as part of the war effort.

In 1920, Benjamin and Leona were living with her parents in Collingswood along with her two sisters and their husbands. Interestingly, Benjamin was now working as an optometrist like several of his brothers. Benjamin and Leona would have two daughters in the 1920s, Margaret and Clara, the second obviously named for Benjamin’s mother, Clara Wiler Meyers.

Clarence was the next son in line after Benjamin. In 1910 when he was 24, he was already engaged in the cotton yarns business, an industry to which he dedicated his entire career. Despite being the seventh child, he was the first to marry. He married Estelle Seidenbach in 1911; she was just 21, and he was 24. She was also a Philadelphia native; her father was already retired at age 50 in 1900, according to the census. In 1912, they were living at 2251 North Park Avenue. On October 23, 1919, their daughter Nancy was born. On the 1920 census, the family was still residing at 2251 North Park Avenue, and Clarence was still a cotton yarns merchant. Googling his name brings up a number of results regarding his business and the patents they owned and/or developed.

Here’s one little news item from the November 1919 Underwear and Hosiery Review:

Next in line was Franklin, born just a year after Clarence. He was, like some of his older brothers, an optometrist. In 1912, he was also still living with his family at 1906 Diamond Street. By 1914, he named his occupation as an optician in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, but by 1918 when he registered for the draft, he gave his occupation as optometrist. At that time he was living and working in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and was still single. Sometime between 1918 and 1920, however, Franklin married Mae Gross, a native of Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, and daughter of a clothing salesman. Bloomsburg is 114 miles northwest of Pottstown, so it would be interesting to know how these two met. In 1920, they were living in Pottstown, where Franklin continued to practice optometry. They would have one child, Carolyn, born in 1922.

Finally, after having eight boys in a row, Clara and Daniel had a daughter, Miriam, born in 1892, five years after Franklin was born. In 1910, Miriam had been only eighteen and was still at home. In 1914, she married Abram Strauss. He was born in Reynoldsville, Pennsylvania, in 1887; he was 27, and Miriam was 21 when they married. Abram was a physician, and in 1916 he and Miriam were living at 600 Butler Avenue in Philadelphia. Their first child, Daniel, was born that year. They were still living at 600 Butler as of June, 1917, when Abram registered for the draft. In 1920, Abram, Miriam and Daniel were living at 1848 North 16th Street, and Abram’s mother Mary, sister Helena, and aunt Clara were also living with them. Only Abram and his sister were working outside the home. By the next year Miriam, Abram, and Daniel were living at 1836 North 17th Street. I am not sure how many of those in the 1920 household moved with them. Miriam and Abram also had another child Richard in September, 1921.

The penultimate child of Clara Wiler and Daniel Meyers was Charlotte or Lottie, born a year after Miriam. She married J. Albert Field in 1914 when she was 21; he was 33. He was an assistant manager of a department store and the son of a salesman born in Northern Ireland and a woman born in New York. In September 1918 when he registered for the draft, Albert and Miriam were living at 1905 Diamond Street, and Albert was a manager at John Wanamaker’s Department Store. They were still living there in 1920, as mentioned above, along with Miriam’s oldest brother Leon and her youngest brother Milton.

Which brings me to Milton, the youngest of the children, born in 1896, so only fourteen in 1910. He was living with his mother and siblings in 1918 when he registered for the draft and was working for his brother Clarence in the cotton yarns business. Milton served in the Navy from December 1917 until December 1918 during World War I. He was living at 1905 Diamond in 1920, as stated above, and working with Clarence.

Thus, by 1920, Clara Wiler Meyers and two of her adult children, Samuel and Harry, had died. Several of the other sons had gone into optometry; one son was an engineer, one was a clothing manufacturer, one was a cotton yard manufacturer, and one was working in the production of aircraft parts. One daughter had married a doctor, and one a department store manager. All of the children alive in 1920 other than Leon and Milton had married between 1910 and 1920; there were also a number of grandchildren born during the decade. So although there were some terrible losses during this decade, for many members of the family the decade brought both some professional and personal successes. Certainly Clara’s family overall fared better than the families of her siblings Fanny and Eliza.

I will bring the Caroline Dreyfuss story to an end in my next post before moving on to the last of the extended Dreyfuss/Nusbaum clan, the family of Ernst Nusbaum.

[1] I did find a Josephine Levy, born in Pennsylvania, living in New York City on the 1940 census, of the approximate age. She was listed as married, but living as a lodger and not with a husband. That could be Alfred’s ex-wife, but I can’t be sure.

[2] This is the same address found on Simon Wiler’s death certificate in 1911. I cannot (yet) explain whether that is a coincidence or not.

[3] It appears that before the 20th century, the term “optician” was used to refer both to those who made glasses and those who evaluated eyesight for the need for those glasses. According to Wikipedia, “Although the term optometry appeared in the 1759 book A Treatise on the Eye: The Manner and Phenomena of Vision by Scottish physician William Porterfield, it was not until the early twentieth century in the United States and Australia that it began to be used to describe the profession.” All of the Meyers brothers who started out as opticians eventually switched from the term optician to the term optometrist to describe their occupation.

The last twoposts and the research surrounding them have really been draining. The sad stories of Minnie Simon and Daniel Meyers in particular were hard to read about and to write about. And sadly the next decade for the descendants of Caroline Dreyfuss and Moses Wiler is no more uplifting. In fact, in some ways it’s even worse than the first decade of the 20th century. But rather than put it off, I want to get it done. Today I will post about the children of Eliza Wiler and Moses Simon; next I will post about the children of Fanny Wiler and Joseph Levy and the children of Clara Wiler and Daniel Meyers. Then maybe I can post some cartoons or funny pictures or pictures of kittens. Anything but death, disease, and despair.

The four surviving children of Eliza Wiler and Leman Simon continued to have far more than their fair share of tragedy in the 1910s. First, on April 20, 1915, the youngest child Leon died from tuberculosis. He had been at the Mont Alto Sanitarium in Quincy, Pennsylvania for over a year. He was only 36 years old. Having just watched the PBS program about tuberculosis, “The Forgotten Plague,” on February 10, I have a whole new appreciation for the suffering this disease caused. People could live for years with the disease, coughing, wasting away, and being sent to live in a sanitarium surrounded by others also suffering from these symptoms. I now better understand how many people were affected by TB and how lucky we all are that medical science eventually figured out not only how to treat it, but also how to prevent it.

Title: Mont Alto State Sanatorium, high in the mountains of Mont Alto State Forest Park, located in Franklin County, Pa., on Route 997, between Chambersburg and WaynesboroCreated/Published: John Myerly Company, Hagerstown, Md.

There are a number of strange things about Leon’s death certificate. First, notice that it says Leon was widowed. I have no record that he ever married, and since as I pointed out in my last post, I can’t find Leon on the 1910 census, I don’t know whether he married before or after the 1910 census. In addition, if he was widowed, it means his wife also died very young.

The second strange thing is the name of the informant: Leon Simon. Certainly Leon could not have signed his own death certificate. I checked to see if there was another Leon Simon in the extended family who might have signed, and there was Leon (Dinkelspiel) Simon, the son of Moses Simon and Paulina Dinkelspiel, who was after all Leon (Wiler) Simon’s first cousin. But that Leon was fifteen years older and lived in Baltimore. I found it strange that he would be signing the death certificate when Leon the deceased had so many closer relatives living right in Philadelphia.

Then I looked more closely and realized that the handwriting on the signature of the informant matched the handwriting of the local registrar, Wilson Reynolds. The rest of the handwriting on the certificate matches that of the doctor, William McKelvey, who provided the cause of death. I am not sure what to make of this except that perhaps Leon had provided all the information about his family to the sanitarium at some earlier point and that the doctor had then filled it out and the registrar just “rubber stamped” it by signing both Leon’s name and his own.

The final interesting piece of information on this certificate is the address provided as Leon’s last address before entering the sanitarium: 2513 South 18th Street. You may remember that I also had trouble locating Leon’s brother Joseph on the 1910 census because there were so many men with that name in Philadelphia. Using this address I found Joseph L. Simon living at that same address both on the 1910 and in the 1920 census reports as well as in the 1918 Philadelphia directory. It is also the address that Joseph gave on the funeral bill for his brother Leon’s funeral in 1915.

On the two census reports, Joseph was married and living with his wife, Mary, who was nineteen years younger than he was. The 1910 census reports that Joseph and Mary had been married for eight years, meaning they married in 1902. I’ve yet to find a marriage certificate. Joseph was working as an accountant for a trust company (Providence Life & Trust Co, according to the funeral bill).

Mary was born in Virginia, as were both of her parents. The only part of the 1910 census report that bothers me is that it says that Joseph’s father (Leman) was born in Pennsylvania; he was born in Germany. It says that Joseph’s mother (Eliza) was born in Virginia; she was born in Pennsylvania. But overall, it seems that this is definitely my Joseph Simon. The address on Leon’s death certificate and funeral bill seem quite persuasive evidence of that conclusion.

The 1920 census did not help matters though. On that census, Joseph’s parents are both listed as born in Virginia. Very strange. Could Mary have thought he was a Virginian like she was? If he married her in 1902 as indicated on the 1910 census, Leman Simon was still alive. I can’t imagine that a German immigrant sounded like a Virginian even after being in Pennsylvania for almost fifty years. Nevertheless, because they were still living at 2513 South 18th Street, I still believe that this is the right Joseph and Mary Simon.

And then Joseph and Mary disappear. There are many, many Joseph and Mary Simons listed in directories in many, many places during this time period, yet the 1930 census does not have one couple that fits my Joseph Simon even as closely as the 1910 and 1920 census reports. This was the closest fit I could find for Joseph.

On this census the birth places of Joseph’s parents are correct: Germany and Pennsylvania. The age is correct. But the middle initial looks more like an H than an L. There is no occupation, so that is no help. Joseph’s marital status is given as single, and he is living at a lodger at what seems to be a very large boarding house. I think this is Joseph. If so, what happened to Mary? Did she die? Did she leave him? I don’t know. The trail has run dry. It also ran dry on Joseph. I cannot find him on the 1940 census nor have I found a record of his death. He remains an elusive subject.

As for Flora Simon, she had been widowed back in 1901 when Nathan Strouse died, and she had remarried in 1903. But that marriage did not last. Although Flora was living with her second husband Albert Heulings in 1910, by 1917 he was married to another woman, Evelyn Cotton, according to both the Cook County, Illinois Marriage Index and his draft registration for World War I.

On the 1920 census, Flora was listed as divorced and living with her son Lester, now 31 years old. Flora was working as the “keeper of an apartment house,” and Lester was in the advertising business. There were also three lodgers plus Flora’s sister Nellie. Why was Nellie living with her sister? What had happened to her husband Louis? That’s when I looked and found the death certificate for Florrie Loux, a child I had not known about until I saw the 1920 census and looked for where Louis Loux might have been.

And that’s where the story really turns tragic.

I mentioned in my last post that I couldn’t find Nellie and Louis on the 1910 census and would not have known about their daughter if I had not found her death certificate.

Florrie had died on September 21, 1918 from burns accidentally caused by matches. A seven year old child. There is nothing I can say to describe the horror I felt when I saw that death certificate.

Three months later her father Louis B. Loux died from broncho pneumonia on December 15, 1918.

Philadelphia Inquirer December 17, 1918, p. 19

From his World War I draft registration, I know that in 1917 Louis had been working in Philadelphia doing advertising sales for the German Daily Gazette. The home address he had provided for his 1917 draft registration, however, was 311 Linden Street, Haddonfield, New Jersey. The death notice for Louis indicated that that was his parents’ residential address in 1918. But Florrie’s death certificate indicated that she and Louis both had been living at 128 North 10th Street in Philadelphia when she died. I was able to obtain the information contained in the death certificate for Louis (I am still waiting the actual document), and it reports that he was divorced at the time of his death. I cannot tell from these records whether Louis and Nellie had divorced before or after the death of their daughter.

UPDATE: Here is the death certificate for Louis Loux.

Think about it: between 1910 and 1920, Leon Simon had died from tuberculosis; Flora Simon, already widowed once, saw another marriage end; Joseph Simon was married, but sometime after 1920, his marriage seems also to have ended either by death or divorce; and Nellie Simon lost both her young daughter and her ex-husband in the space of a few months in 1918. All this followed a decade where Leon, Flora, Joseph and Nellie had lost both of their parents and their sister Minnie.

Now you can see why I need something to lift my spirits. Fortunately, as I will cover in my next post, things were not as bad for the children of Fanny Wiler Levy or the children of Clara Wiler Meyers. Not as bad.

The 19th century ended badly for the extended family of Caroline Dreyfuss and Moses Wiler. Their daughter Eliza Wiler Simon died in August 1897, and their son-in-law Daniel Meyers, Clara’s husband, died in 1902, following several years of financial distress and legal problems. Unfortunately, it only got worse as the 20th century began.

First, on April 23, 1901, Flora Simon’s husband Nathan Strouse died from myasthenia gravis. He was 24 years older than Flora, but only 58 years old when he died. Their son Lester was only thirteen years old when he lost his father. I found it rather interesting that Nathan’s occupation on the death certificate was given as “gentleman.”

Two years later Flora married Alfred C. Heulings, a New Jersey lawyer who, in contrast to her first husband, was almost twelve years younger than Flora.

Then in 1904, there was another disaster for the family. Minnie Simon, the younger daughter of Eliza Wiler and Leman Simon, committed suicide. Her death certificate stated that she took her life “by inhaling gas while temporarily insane.”

From Joseph’s description of his sister’s personality, today she might have been diagnosed and treated for bipolar disease or depression. But in 1904 that was not possible, and so Minnie succumbed to mental illness and took her own life. She was only 26 years old.

Two years after losing his daughter Minnie and nine years after losing his wife Eliza, Leman Simon passed away on October 13, 1906, from a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 72 years old.

Thus, in the ten years between 1897 and 1906, the family lost five members: Eliza Wiler Simon, Nathan Strouse, Daniel Meyers, Minnie Simon, and Leman Simon. The Simon family in particular must have been quite devastated.

Not all was sad, however, in the first ten years of the 20th century. Nellie Simon married Louis Boughen Loux on April 30, 1908. They were married in the Eleventh Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. Louis was 21, and Nellie was 33. Like her sister Flora’s second marriage, this was a marriage between a man and a significantly older woman, which must have been quite unusual in those days.

Thus, by 1910, the family had changed quite a bit. Leman and Eliza Simon were both gone, as was their daughter Minnie. Flora was living with her second husband Albert Heulings and her son Lester Strouse at 913 North 16th Street. Albert was practicing law. Lester, who had graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1909, was now 21 and working in the advertising business for the Quaker City Publicity Company. There were also two servants in the household.

As for Flora’s siblings, I am once again having a terrible time finding them on the census. Nellie Simon and her husband Louis Loux had a child Florie born on March 3, 1910, in Philadelphia, but I only know this from Florie’s death certificate. I cannot find a birth record, nor can I find Nellie and Louis on the 1910 census. I found a Leon Simon listed in the 1908 Philadelphia directory at 541 Fernon Street, working as a bookkeeper, but he is not at that address on the 1910 census. Joseph Simon’s address in 1904 was 136 Farson Street in West Philadelphia, according to the news article about his sister Minnie’s death. But he is not at that address on the 1910 census. I have some possible listings for Joseph, but given how common his name was, I just am not certain.

As for the family of Clara Wiler Meyers, Clara in 1910 was a widow, still living at the long-time family home at 920 Franklin Street, with nine of her children. Her oldest son Leon Meyers (36 in 1910) had by 1902 become an optician and was still living at home as late as 1904. In 1910 he was living at 1628 North 13th Street, according to the Philadelphia directory, yet he is not listed there on the 1910 census, nor is he listed on the census at 1904 Somerset Street, where he is listed as residing in the 1911 directory. I think Leon, like his Simon cousins, just eluded the census taker. His younger brother, Benjamin Franklin Meyers, 25 years old in 1910, was living as a boarder in Trenton, New Jersey, where he was working as a watch maker in a watch factory.

The other nine Meyers children were still living with their mother Clara. All were unmarried. Samuel (34) was like his brother Leon an optician. Harry (33) was a tailor. Isador (30) was a “commercial traveler” for a men’s clothing business. Max (28) was a draftsman for a machine works business. Clarence (24) was a cotton yarn salesman. Frank (22) was an optician like his two older brothers Leon and Samuel. The three youngest children Lottie (20), Miriam (17), and Milton (14) were all at home and not occupied.

I cannot imagine what this house looked like that accommodated all of those people. I’ve tried to locate a photograph, but have had no luck. Google Street View shows a modern apartment building at that address today.

Fanny Wiler Levy’s three sons were also still single and living with their father Joseph and stepmother Bella at home at 2122 Camac Street in 1910. Their father Joseph Levy was living on his “own income,” according to the 1910 census. Alfred, now 41, was a lumber salesman, and Leon (37) and Monroe (35) were clothing salesman. Their half-sister Miriam (27) was married to Arthur Hanff, a traveling shirt salesman.

Simon Wiler, the only son of Caroline Dreyfuss and Moses Wiler, was living in a large boarding house on Spruce Street in 1910. He was working as a salesman in a paper warehouse. Simon died the following year on October 23, 1911. He died from shock after a prostatectomy, according to the death certificate. Although the death certificate says he was residing at 1905 Diamond Street prior to his death, he is not listed there on the 1910 census. The informant on the certificate was A. Freed, the undertaker, who did not know the names of Simon’s parents, but given the name, the age, and the occupation, it seems reasonable to conclude that this was Simon, the son of Caroline and Moses. Like the other members of his family, he was buried at Mt. Sinai cemetery.

Thus, as of 1911, the only child of Caroline Dreyfuss and Moses Wiler who was still alive was Clara Wiler Meyers. Between 1897 and 1911, there had been many deaths, but only two weddings and only one birth. There were a number of adult cousins still living at home with their parents. The next ten years brought continued heartache and loss.

In my last post, I wrote about the fact that Daniel Meyers, husband of Clara Wiler, had failed to honor the terms of the will of his mother-in-law Caroline Dreyfuss Wiler when he failed to pay Caroline’s grandchildren the money they had been promised. Why hadn’t Daniel paid? What would have led him to breach his duties as executor and trustee of the estate?

And who was Daniel Meyers? Why was he appointed to be the executor and trustee? Caroline’s husband Moses was still alive when Caroline died as was her son Simon. But Caroline may not have wanted to have her husband or son in charge of the estate in order to have a more “objective” person in charge. I assume that a woman could not be appointed trustee/executor in 1885, but Caroline had two other sons-in-law, Leman Simon and Joseph Levy. So why Daniel? Leman Simon was in Pittsburgh until the mid-1880s; he and Eliza did not move back until around the time or after the time Caroline died, so he was not around. Perhaps Caroline wanted someone closer to home. As for Joseph Levy, by 1878, his wife Fanny had died, and he had remarried, so Caroline might not have thought he was an appropriate choice. Daniel Meyers was in Philadelphia, married to Clara, and in 1885 had a stable business. He must have seemed like the obvious choice.

Daniel Meyers was, like Leman Simon and Joseph Levy, a German Jewish immigrant. He was born in 1846 in Bavaria, and according to his passport application, immigrated in 1864. He and his brother Samuel were in the clothing business together in 1867. By 1872, a year after marrying Clara Wiler, Daniel was listed in the Philadelphia directory doing business under the firm name D. Meyers and Company in business with Isaac Samler. The family was living at 718 Fairmount Avenue throughout the 1870s and in 1880, but in 1881, Daniel’s home address is 960 North 7th Street, just a few blocks away. By 1885 they had moved again to 927 Franklin Street, and then in 1891 to 920 Franklin Street, where they stayed for many years. In 1886, Isaac Samler retired from the business, and Daniel became the sole propietor of the business that carried his name.

Philadelphia Inquirer December 31, 1886, p. 3

Meanwhile, Daniel and Clara had on average a new baby every year and a half between 1872 and 1896. Daniel and Clara had five children by 1880 and eight more between 1880 and 1900, but one was stillborn and one, Bertha, died from heart disease before she was ten years old. Thus, Daniel was supporting eleven children as well as Clara and himself in the 1880s and 1890s. By 1895 the oldest son Leon was working out of house, first as a foreman in 1895 and then as a salesman in 1897, but still living at home. But the other ten children were still at home and not yet working.

Maybe it was all too much of a financial strain for Daniel. This article from The Philadelphia Times of October 31, 1897, reported a large number of judgments executed against D. Meyers & Co., including two very large ones for over $18,000. One of those was in favor of Isaac Samler, Daniel’s former partner. Keep in mind that $18,000 in 1897 would be equivalent to about $500,000 in today’s dollars.

A fellow family historian descended from a relative of Daniel Meyers shared this news story with me that revealed that on November 1, 1897, D. Meyers and Company was forced to close.

Philadelphia Inquirer, November 1, 1897, p. 9

The assets of the business were sold at a sheriff’s sale, as this advertisement, also shared by the fellow family historian, in the Philadelphia Inquirer from November 13, 1897, page 16, revealed:

The text says, “We Bought at Sheriff’s Sale an Enormous Stock of Cothing By the failure of D. Meyers & Co., 36 North Third Street, this City, who for a great many years conducted a manufacturing and wholesale clothing business at 36 North Third Street, was recently sold out by the Sheriff.”

There were numerous other attachments brought against Daniel Meyers d/b/a D.Meyers & Co. after the business was closed. I also found the article below indicating that there was a sheriff’s sale of property belonging to Daniel Meyers and D. Meyers and Company in September, 1898, for over $16,000.

Perhaps this explains why Daniel did not distribute the principal of Caroline’s estate to her grandchildren as he was legally obligated to do after Eliza Simon died in 1897. Perhaps that money was gone.

By 1900 six of Daniel and Clara’s sons, Leon, Samuel, Harry, Isadore, Benjamin, and Max, were now working, Samuel as a clothing merchant, Harry as a tailor, Leon, Isadore and Benjamin as salesmen, and Max as a draftsman. Although this might have alleviated the financial burden carried by Daniel to some extent, it appears not to have been sufficient. The other five younger children were all still at home. In April, 1902, a judgment was entered against Daniel and Clara in the amount of $5,678, apparently for defaulting on a mortgage loan with a building and loan association. I can’t help but notice that the amount they owed was almost to the dollar the amount of money that had been the principal in Caroline’s estate. Had they borrowed this amount to satisfy the attachment obtained by the new trustee of Caroline’s estate and then not had sufficient assets to pay back the lender?

Six months after this judgment was entered, Daniel Meyers died on October 14, 1902, from “organic disease of the heart, embolism, paralysis, and general atheromas.” He was sixty years old. I don’t know what if any relationship there was between his financial troubles, the legal problems, and the resulting family problems, on the one hand, and his health on the other, but I tend to think they were not unrelated.